Most of the people we talk with about opening a brewery already have some brewing experience. They might be a home brewer looking to go pro, or they might be growing their nano-brewery into a production operation. In either case, the equipment used to brew this ancient beverage can be broken down into a few standard components, although the size and features change from brewery to brewery. In this series of articles, we’ll take a look at what equipment you’ll need in a production brewery, as well as some additional items that’ll make your brew day a lot easier.
Let’s start in the brew house, where grains and water are transformed into sweet wort. The first requirement is a hot water source. For most, this comes in the form of a hot liquor tank (HLT), a vessel where water is heated to the desired temperature using one of three heat sources. The HLT may also include an internal HERMS coil, used to regulate the wort temperature during the mash stage. In some cases, especially where space is limited and the water supply needs little adjustment for brewing or cleaning, an on-demand hot water heater is used. These can be electric or gas fired, and as long as they produce enough hot water to keep up with your process(sparging and cleaning,) they can be a good fit for a smaller system. For larger systems, several on-demand heaters may be required to keep pace, making them less desirable from a cost perspective.
The hot water is then pumped into the mash tun, which is simply a tank where the grains are mixed with hot water. For systems roughly 5BBL and up, the mash tun will benefit from the addition of a motor-driven rake and plow to thoroughly mix the grains after mashing in. For smaller systems, a little elbow grease gets the jobs done. The most common configuration in a craft brewery is a combination mash-lautering tun that includes a false bottom, constructed of perforated metal or a mesh screen. The false bottom filters the grains from the liquid as the wort drains from the bottom of the tank. Although the lautering tun can be a separate vessel, this is really only beneficial if you want to free up your mash tun for double or triple batching.
Alternatively, a mash press (or filter press) can be used to separate the wort from the grains. In this case, the grist(grains and water) is mixed in a mash tun and pumped into the press in which a series of filter plates are stacked together (horizontally) in a hydraulic press. Each pair of plates forms a cavity that captures the spent grains while allowing the liquid to pass through the filter screens. The press will then be pressurized to about 40psi to squeeze the grains, extracting nearly 100% of the liquid from the grist. While less common in craft brewing, this technique is prevalent in larger breweries and has long been in use. Those who use one can expect an increase of roughly 10% in efficiency (as compared to a lauter tun) and quicker turns when double or triple batching.
The third major tank in the brew house is the brew kettle, and it has one job - to boil your wort. As the wort boils, a condensate stack or vent hood draws the steam away, encouraging a vigorous boil and preventing the condensation, which will contain unwanted compounds such as SMM, from dripping back into the kettle. Many brewers also use the kettle as their whirlpool tank, and while a dedicated whirlpool will enable faster turns for double batching, a combination kettle-whirlpool is a common setup. To achieve the whirlpool in the kettle, the wort is gently recirculated out of a bottom port and back into a tangential inlet about 2/3 of the way up the side of the tank.
Lastly, you might find a cold liquor tank(CLT) next to a brew house. This glycol jacketed tank allows you to store cold water to be used in a couple ways. First, it can be blended through a mixing valve with hot water from the HLT to hit your strike temperature. Doing so allows you to keep hotter water in the HLT, which reduces the water draw from this tank and allows you to keep more water in the HLT for double batching or cleaning. Second, the cold water from the CLT can be used in the heat exchanger during knockout to bring your wort down to pitching temps without the use of glycol, even for lagers.
If you are planning to open a brewery. TIANTAI BrewTech could help you answer your questions and supply the brewery equipment system. We supply 2-150bbl complete beer brewing brewery equipment system including malt milling equipment, brewhouse equipment, fermenters, brite beer tanks, beer bottling machine,beer canning machine, beer kegging machine, hopping machine, yeast propagation equipment. We also supply all auxiliary brewery systems like steam heating pipe and valves, water treatment, filter, air compressor etc. Everything in brewery are all in our list.
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